Wednesday,
July 14, 2021
I cry out to the Lord; I plead for the Lord’s
mercy. I pour out my
complaints before him and tell him all my troubles. When I am overwhelmed, you alone know
the way I should turn. Wherever I go, my
enemies have set traps for me. I
look for someone to come and help me, but no one gives me a passing thought! No one will help me; no one cares a bit what happens to me. Then I pray to you, O Lord. I say, “You are my place of refuge. You are all I really want in life. Psalm 142:1-5
In preparing for celebrating the Lord’s Supper with
a group of other preachers I realized I was a bit consumed by commitments. My schedule looks like a crazed chicken with
print cartridges for feet had been turned loose to run all over my calendar! Here I was, contemplating what it would take
to be a non-anxious presence as the celebrant, realizing (in that honest look-in-the-mirror
moment), that I was probably the most-anxious guy who would sit at that table.
It’s a common state of affairs these days; there’s
just not enough time for everything you planned, much less what everybody else
in your world wants. As the Psalmist, it’s
no trouble at all to make the leap from well, I’m a little busier than I’d
like to be…all the way to stop this crazy merry-go-round, I need
to get off before I explode!
The key word in that compound thought is OVERWHELMED!
If you can honestly say you’ve never felt
overwhelmed, you’re either quite disconnected from everyone and everything, and
might consider checking with a psychotherapist for some new meds…or you’re not
really being honest. Anxiety, fear, concern,
frazzled…there are so many ways to describe that sense in the pit of your
stomach that alerts you to the fact that you can’t possibly complete all that
life has dumped on your plate!
Then I read today’s Psalm again. A Psalm generally appears 3 times each week in
the Lectionary Readings, and I’m certain the Lord (knowing how dense I
can be) ordained it that way. Sometimes
it takes much rain to soak a dry mind!
It finally sunk-in; the Psalmist knew how to sing woe, despair,
and agony on me as well as anyone; in short – he is me!
And look what I discovered – the Psalmist opens
up that part of my innermost being and lays it out for the sun to get at it –
to chase the darkness and fear, to cull the briars from where I’m walking
barefoot. He opens the prayer book of my
heart and the notes resonate deep-within how God, as my refuge from all the tormenting
angst of the day’s demands, is all my heart really wanted anyway.
And there is a reason for that. Created in the image of God, even a sin-stained
life can recognize the light that still lingers there, waiting to be set on the
hills of our heart and soul. It
illuminates all the goodness of the hand of God from which we’ve sprung. And it draws us to Him. And that is enough to turn the anxiety of all
the shortcomings I feel into nothing but gratitude for God’s grace. If there is any place in this universe where
Russell doesn’t come up short, it’s when he is bathed in the forgiveness of God’s
loving embrace.
That’s a different kind of being
overwhelmed; beloved, I’ll take that over what the world wants to give
me…any day!
For You Today
If
you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the workload, crises, world news, or what
to do about your child’s failing grades in school….or maybe just the whole lot
of what you’ve been dealing-with…take an extra moment with Psalm 142
today. Nothing that’s been chasing you
will stand a chance at robbing the peace you’ll find there.
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
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